Atmospheric pressures acting upon the various surfaces of an aircraft are determinative of the performance of aircraft. Indeed, flight itself is predominantly a function of the interaction of the aircraft outer surfaces with air. For example, lift is caused by the differential between air pressure acting on the upper and lower surfaces of the aircraft wings in the wind stream.
For these reasons, the aircraft and airline industries have dedicated large amounts of time and money to develop means for monitoring flight performance and detecting lift-robbing wing contaminants, such as Type II fluids and ice, wind shear, microbursts and other adverse air conditions. Examples of such systems and apparatus are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,691,356; 4,110,605; 4,490,802; 4,728,951; 4,775,118; 4,837,695; 4,843,554; 4,980,833 and 5,047,942 the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference herein.
In spite of the importance of air pressure acting on the surface of an aircraft, none of the references disclose a method or apparatus to directly measure or analyze the actual pressures acting on the surface of an aircraft.
In addition, no system or apparatus utilizes pressure development data in conjunction with Advanced Flight Control Systems (AFCS) to control the aircraft or transmit this data to ground personnel for evaluation of flight performance and abnormalities in pressure development.
The present invention is provided to solve these and other problems.